Start with the market
Open Discover to search a symbol or exact Solana mint. SHADOW’s production terminal trades on Solana mainnet. Boosted-token rankings represent promoted markets, not organic market-wide trends. Verify the mint before trading. Logos, names and reported metrics are untrusted.
Connect a wallet
Use Connect wallet and authorize a Wallet Standard wallet. SHADOW supports account selection through the wallet. Create isolated accounts in your wallet’s account manager; label them in Settings after connecting. The terminal never requests private keys.
Request and review a swap
Swaps require server-side Helius and Jupiter API keys, a quote signing secret, and explicit mainnet enablement. Jupiter’s Swap v2 API supplies the quote and assembled transaction. Choose buy or sell, enter an amount, select slippage and priority fee cap, then request a quote.
Keep SOL available for fees. This release accepts wallet-funded routes with one signer. Sponsored or co-signed routes are rejected before wallet approval because their signing flow has not been integrated.
Review output, minimum received, route, price impact, fees and mint warnings. A simulation must succeed before you can approve signing. A quote expires after 45 seconds. Check the mainnet acknowledgment, then approve the wallet prompt. Signed transaction bytes must preserve the quoted message. The backend simulates with signature verification before submission. Never retry an uncertain submission without checking its signature.
Set up your workspace
Use All panels for discovery, charts and execution together, or Focus to give the chart more room. The layout is saved in this browser. Screen privacy masks supported balance and address displays; transaction-approval details remain visible and on-chain activity remains public.
Follow the receipt
A submission response is not chain confirmation. SHADOW saves a trackable receipt where available and reads RPC status for up to three minutes. Confirmed or finalized evidence updates the receipt and refreshes balances and history. Use Check confirmations for older submissions. If the outcome is uncertain, inspect the explorer before retrying; SHADOW does not automatically resend a trade.
Inspect your public links
Open Private Mode to filter observed counterparties and select a graph node for its supporting transaction links. Export report downloads the public observations, including addresses and signatures, with coverage and uncertainty attached. Screen masking does not redact that report. Direct transfers are not proof of a common owner.
Know the accounting limits
Portfolio holdings come from confirmed RPC balances across SPL Token and Token-2022 accounts. USD valuation uses available market prices on mainnet. Unpriced assets are excluded and counted. Average entry price, realized P&L and unrealized P&L remain unavailable until a complete history and historical price accounting engine exist. A transfer is not assumed to be a purchase.
Compete by choice
Arena leaderboard participation requires separate wallet-signed consent to publish a chosen username and finalized SHADOW swap count. Wallet mappings stay in server-only tables. Public trading patterns may still link a username to an address; usernames do not make transactions anonymous. Connecting a wallet does not enroll it. Pending, failed, older and non-SHADOW transactions do not count. Use Refresh my confirmations after trading. The current metric is a seven-day activity count, not P&L or volume. You can remove your listing; blockchain history and others’ copies persist. Rewardsare inactive until a funded campaign and eligibility rules are published.
Creator fees & future revenue
Creator fees are allocated 50% to eligible terminal trader rewards and 50% to buybacks and burns. Separately, 100% of future platform revenue is allocated to buybacks and burns. No SHADOW platform fee is active. Allocation is not completed spending: reward payouts, buybacks, burns and the SHADOW/NEAR pool remain inactive pending verified assets, funding and execution.
Configure production services
In Vercel → Project → Settings → Environment Variables → Production, set server-only HELIUS_API_KEY, JUPITER_API_KEY and a random QUOTE_SIGNING_SECRET of at least 32 characters. Arena additionally needs SUPABASE_URL, SUPABASE_SECRET_KEY and database migrations through 0003_arena_usernames.sql. Redeploy after changing variables.
Use SOLANA_CLUSTER=mainnet-beta, NEXT_PUBLIC_SOLANA_CLUSTER=mainnet-beta, ENABLE_MAINNET_TRADING=true and APP_ORIGIN=https://shadow-solana-terminal.vercel.app. Keep service secrets out of NEXT_PUBLIC_ variables. Check deployment status.
Core trading needs no operator or developer wallet private key in Vercel. Users sign in their own wallets. The separate optional Railway creator-fee service has a dedicated creator-authority signer setting, PUMP_CREATOR_PRIVATE_KEY. Configure it only in that service’s Variables, with a dedicated authority wallet; keep development and main wallet keys out. Financial automation remains gated. See the repository’s docs/OPERATOR_SETUP.md for migration and worker instructions.
Execution and feature status
/api/capabilities reports active network, indexing configuration and trading availability. Privacy-enhanced trading, limit orders, full-history P&L, liquidity-growth ranking, holder concentration, migration classification, cloud sync and notification delivery are unavailable. Their controls are disabled or omitted, with limits shown where relevant.
Deploy & operate
The repository includes Vercel frontend configuration, Railway API and worker services, Supabase SQL migrations, CI and automated tests. Follow DEPLOYMENT.md and .env.example. Run npm run check and npm run test:e2e before release. Use separate projects and credentials for development, staging and production.
Verified API references: Jupiter Swap v2, DEX Screener, GeckoTerminal, Solana RPC.